"The shame should be all on his side then," quoth the incorrigible Bob. "I did not make him the bad man he was, though he made me. He was always an ugly fellow, and the scorching he has got down there (and he pointed significantly to the ground) has not improved his looks. But mother would know him in a minute."
"I never want to see your father again, Robert," said Martha, doggedly; "so you need not address any such impertinent remarks to me. I had enough of his company here. I don't know why he should leave his grave to haunt me after his death."
"For the love he bore you while on earth," said the dutiful son, glancing round the group with a knowing look. "Dad is sure of a kind reception from you, mother."
"The day he was buried," said Martha, "was the only happy one I had known for twenty years, and you know it well. One of his last acts was to make me a cripple for life."
"How did he come by his death, Mother Mason?" asked a young sailor, Tom Weston by name.
"He was killed in a row with the smugglers," said Bob. "He had helped them to land some brandy, and they wanted to cheat him out of his pay. Father had lots of pluck. He had lost an eye once before in such a frolic. He attacked the whole band single-handed, and got knocked on the head in the scuffle. The smugglers ran away, and left mother to bury the dead."
"He only got what he deserved," muttered Martha. "It is a pity he did not get it twenty years before. But he is gone to his place, and I am determined to keep mine. A ghost has no legal claim to the property of the living, and he shall never get possession of this house, living or dead, again."
"But suppose, Martha, he should take it into his head to haunt it, and make it too hot to hold you," said Tom Weston, "what would you do then?"
"I think I know a secret or two that would lay the ghost," returned Martha; and hobbling across the kitchen on her crutch, she lifted down an old horse-pistol that was suspended to one of the low cross-beams, and wiping the dust from it with her apron, she carefully examined the lock. "This should speak my welcome to all such unwelcome intruders. It has released more than one troublesome spirit from its clay tenement, and I have no doubt that it would be found equally efficacious in quieting others—that is, if they have the audacity to try their strength against me;" and she glanced disdainfully at her son from beneath her bushy lowering brows. "This brown dog is old, but he can still bark and bite!"
"How vicious mother looks!" said Bob, with a loud laugh. "It would require a ghost with some pluck to face her."